Forrest, thanks for the great question, hopefully some great minds will stop by and help us out. I think that any type of viral marketing is always desirable. If we have something that we are passionate about, if we can focus on it, hopefully we can then influence others to action as well. This kind of reminds me of the book “The Secret”, which basically says that if you think about something, focus your mind on what you want, not what you don’t want, then it will come to fruition.
Personally, I think memes have a tremendous potential to do a lot of good. Hmm maybe we should start a plastic bag reduction meme or a cloth shopping bag meme…hmmm…thinking about your other comment on The July environmental review post.

The Tipping Point is usually called a marketing book … it’s about how word of mouth works. And that’s a hugely important thing to know, for anybody with any interest at all in any type of marketing, social anything, etc. And then there’s the idea of memes ( aka memetics ) that blog memes are based on.

A lot of people frame memes as “non-biological evolution.” The idea is literally that ideas “take over” our minds, and the ones that are good at it, get us to spread them into other minds. When you hear a song that sticks with you, and play it for somebody else, or when you read a book and share the driving concept behind it… That the world is filled with ideas that have what it takes to be spread through the world.

At some level, that’s a metaphor, but it asks questions about what it takes for an idea ( wrapped up in a song … or a blog post ) to be fit enough to survive. I wonder what marketing geniuses think about this notion? Conceptually, is that a good way to describe the world? Does it really follow that our best investment is to hone our message / content / the payload?